


Other Half

by Zetared



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-06-25
Packaged: 2020-05-19 16:07:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19360276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zetared/pseuds/Zetared
Summary: What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. - Matthew 19:6





	Other Half

**Author's Note:**

> Based on Plato’s Symposium on love and, moreover, the fact that Aziraphale and Crowley were once one demon character of Gaiman’s whom Pratchett rendered into two distinct halves.

Cherubim have four wings.

A principality has two.

So does a lesser demon.

This is not uncommon, so neither of them have ever thought much about it. But it’s important. It matters. It means something.

Of course, many things that matter and mean something go unnoticed and unremarked upon. That’s the part of the nature of ineffability. What is unknowable can only go on being unknown when part of it is hidden from sight. (God plays a game with the universe that is like poker but is not poker, but She’s also ridiculously fond of puzzles--the type with trillions of pieces and no telltale picture on the box.)

Memories of before the Fall are hazy for everyone. That’s the way of birth and the early days of creation. Very few of us remember the finer details of our own introduction to a more profound state of existence. It’s the same for ethereal (and occult) beings. Perhaps that loss of memory is down to the trauma of living. Perhaps it’s simply the effect of the passage of endless expanses of time.

Regardless, no one--except, perhaps, God, but She’s hardly going to mention it--remembers much about Heaven before Lucifer and his followers took a nosedive out of God’s domain. And that’s all right, for the most part.

What you don’t remember can’t hurt you, can it?

\--

There are signs, of course. There are always signs. Just because something is hidden doesn’t make it invisible. The whole picture bleeds through, becomes revealed more by the pieces around it than by its own image. 

They have a second sense for each other, for one. 

Wherever Aziraphale goes, Crowley can follow simply by wishing to find him and vice versa. Neither of them think much of it because their frame of reference is biased. Angels can find angels, after all. Demons can sniff out other demons with ease. That angelic resonance and demonic vibrations actually operate on a different wavelength (rather like the difference between AM and FM radio) never occurs to them. They accept this unusual ability to “tune in” as a normal, accepted part of the existence of being a semi-corporeal being in an all too corporeal world.

The wine, for all that it seems innocuous, is another clue. Their tastes run parallel in the extreme when it comes to fermented grapes. (Though Aziraphale will sniff dismissively over Californian vintages out of a sense of carefully maintained snobbery--but that’s all show, really, and has no bearing on their shared sense of taste). Considering how fundamental the sharing of a bottle (or seven) has come to be to the cultivation of their relationship, perhaps the wine is not so innocuous at all.

And, of course, there is the Garden. But that hardly needs explaining.

\--

It’s not as simple as a matter of souls. 

Angels don’t have souls, in the strictest sense. They have _something_ , certainly--a presence, an essence, each one distinct and precious--but they don’t have souls. Souls are immortal. The essence of an angel is beyond even that. It has always existed and it always will. While humans may have been built in God’s image on the outside, angels have been constructed with God’s inner light in mind. They cannot fail to Be anymore than God can. (Contrary to popular rumor, God is not dead. God cannot be anything but alive because She is the very fabric of Life itself. That does not, however, mean that She is paying attention. But that’s a discussion for a different time).

Angels also do not, in the strictest sense, have _forms_. So, in that case, it cannot be as simple as describing a particular angel as “soft bodied” and also “red headed.” Angels have no bodies of any particular texture. And they have no hair to speak of, let alone hair in any particular hue. The best way to describe any angel, let alone a particular one, would be to speak in qualifiers of power and presence. And this particular angel, the one who matters in this particular case, had only an average allotment of both.

But cherubims have four wings. Of that much one can be sure.

\--

It could be argued, perhaps, that it _is_ a matter of sides. You see, they have their own one, now. And no one else is meddling, anymore.

“Where have you been?” Crowley demands. 

Aziraphale blinks at him, turning slightly to nudge the bookshop door shut with his shoe. His arms are busy, full to brimming with newly acquired books. “I should think that rather obvious.”

Crowley hisses softly in reply. He perches on the edge of Aziraphale’s front counter, shoulders rigid and the lenses of his dark glasses glinting, accusatory, in the dim light. “We were meant to leave an hour ago. I can’t believe you forgot.”

“Forgot?” Aziraphale echoes, hardly making a case for himself. He waddles under the weight of his burden to a table and slides the tall stack forward onto it. 

“The theater, angel. You asked for it ‘specially.”

Aziraphale hums, unperturbed. “I believe you’ll find those tickets are for tomorrow night, dear.”

Crowley’s glower morphs into a simple frown. He snaps said tickets out of somewhere unknowable (certainly not his pockets, not in those trousers) and tilts his head, peering at the text. “...Ah.”

“‘Ah’,” Aziraphale echoes, smugly, already bustling past the demon toward the back room. “Cup of tea?”

Crowley grumbles nonsensically for a moment before sliding off the counter and following Aziraphale, shadow-like. “No herbal stuff,” he says, carryingly, “can’t stand drinking that fruity muck.”

Aziraphale’s answering “of course, Crowley” is resolutely mild.

\--

There are moments, rare and brief but notable in their own way, in which Aziraphale finds himself suddenly, intensely aware of a pervasive, building sense of dark, sucking dread. He’s quick to pick up the phone, then, to dial a number that is largely unnecessary (Aziraphale really need only assume the phone will connect correctly and it would do so without a fuss). 

Usually, Crowley will answer. It might take a few consecutive hours of ringing through, but he’ll do it.

And Aziraphale will state (not ask) “come with me to lunch” or “come and help me with this cataloguing” or “it’s a fine day for a stroll in the park.” And Crowley will argue, a bit. And Aziraphale will counter, slightly.

And, in the end, Crowley will appear at his door all fraught with despair and grinning too hard. And Aziraphale will touch his elbow, lightly, and steer him along until the sharp edges of his faked smile go soft and the tension along his body goes lax.

\--

There are moments, rare and brief but notable in their own way, when Crowley will glance at a clock (or a calendar) and do some mental figuring and sigh, longsuffering, as he digs his mobile out of the tight, oppressive pocket of his jeans.

“Take me to that new Indian place,” he’ll say. Or “you’ll grow mushrooms, you sit about much longer; let’s go to the park.” Or “I’ve had time to think about what you said last Thursday, and here’s all the reasons you’re dead wrong.”

And Aziraphale will shake the dust off his feathers and crawl his way out of the depths of his books and meet Crowley at his door, ready to involve himself in larger matters, again.

\--

There was an angel in Heaven. (There were many, many angels in Heaven, actually, but this particular angel was singular, apart, not really _different_ as much as always over _there_ while everyone else was over _here_.)

The angel was clever. The angel was curious. The angel spent rather a lot of time talking to himself in lieu of having anyone else to talk to.

The angel would stretch out four enormous wings and look upon Her vast domain and wonder, to himself, but never just to himself: What else is there but this, do you think?

\--

Think of it in the context of plants.

Even the most brown-thumbed of individuals has a basic understanding of how cuttings work. You have a sturdy, healthy, growing tree. You clip a small piece (a complete piece with all the ability to grow on its own) away and plant it. You grow a new, separate but similar tree. 

It is not worth speculation, especially, which of them is the tree and which was the cutting. Either way, they shared the same root system, once. Either way, the separation leaves them distinct, distanced, distracted by a deep sense of yearning that never quite leaves them, no matter how tightly they might orbit each other, pulled in by the force of it but hesitant, always, to touch for fear that the cutting might remember where it came from and try to graft itself back in.

\--

Adam Young sees it.

Agnes Nutter did, too (but she didn’t find it especially worth mentioning).

Death notices with the professional curiosity but utter disinterest of any being who thoroughly understands the nature of souls (and essences) and appreciates a good quirk in the Matrix but also recognizes that it won’t ever affect him personally (because neither angels nor demons meet Death when they cease to exist). 

God also knows, of course. But that’s hardly surprising, seeing as She’s the one responsible.

Of the four, only Adam is in a position to bring it up.

“Innit it lonely, kinda?”

Crowley looks over at the boy (though, at sixteen and gangly and square-jawed, the antichrist can hardly be called a ‘boy,’ anymore) in muted confusion. “Is what lonely?”

They are sitting on a bench in a tiny park in Tadfield. There is no water, here, and therefore no ducks. Crowley finds he rather misses the needy little menances. But Tadfield has its own minor marvels. The sunset is particularly nice, and the stars will shine with more ferocity and pride than they ever dare could through the light pollution of the city.

Adam kicks his feet, scuffing his trainers into the dirt. He doesn’t look at the demon. “Being all in two pieces, of course.”

Crowley hasn’t a single idea what the kid is getting at, and he says as much.

Adam shakes his head, reconsidering. “Nevermind. I was only curious.”

Aziraphale’s voice carries across the postage stamp park, then. Crowley’s head pops up, ears perked as eagerly as Dog when he hears Adam come back from school. Aziraphale lifts his hand in a welcoming wave, beaming bright as the rapidly descending sun.

Adam smirks at the ground, but he doesn’t press the issue. Maybe it’s not so terribly lonely, after all.

\--

Aziraphale’s tawny head is heavy against Crowley’s shoulder, but Crowley doesn’t mind. 

Their hands settle between them on Crowley’s obscenely white couch, fingers threaded as they’ve been thousands of times over the past six-thousand years--but lately in particular. It feels right and comfortable, but it doesn’t feel Right, especially. No great Understanding falls upon their heads just because they touch, because they kiss, because they are close at last in every sense of the word.

There are two beings sitting on the couch. 

Everything beyond that is absolutely ineffable and couldn’t be changed at this late hour even if they’d known, even if they’d wanted, even if they’d tried.

(Which they don’t, and they wouldn’t, and they won’t.)

\--

Cherubims have four wings.

Aziraphale was a cherubim, once, long before the earth was made.

And Crowley was, too.

 

 


End file.
